


Sow the Wind

by Joyce (Alysswolf)



Series: Absalom [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Competant Villain, Conspiracy, Gen, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alysswolf/pseuds/Joyce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason and CSM cope with rumblings within the Consortium as they draw the net tighter around Mulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sow the Wind

**Author's Note:**

> "For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." Hosea 8:7

11 days after the attack

 

"You're late," Jason greeted his friend without looking up from the computer screen. His fingers were dancing across the keyboard in a rapid staccato beat that underscored the loud New Orleans jazz music pouring out of the hidden CD player.

The smoker closed the door behind him and allowed himself to be enveloped by the music. A bit raucous for his taste, but it did provide an excellent distraction for anyone trying to listen in. Jason must be feeling mellow. Usually when he was playing with the men who monitored the listening devices he gravitated towards Stockhausen or some of the more disharmonious electronic music.

The summons from Jason had been insistent and secret; a code signal known only to the two of them, meaningless to anyone else. Curious, but cautious as ever, the smoker had kept to his usual schedule, maintaining the dull ordinariness of his daily routine. Patience was not only a virtue, but essential for staying alive in the shadowy world he called home. 

"I'm being watched. It seemed prudent to maintain the illusion that I am busy with routine matters," the smoker replied in a calm voice. He detested being followed, especially by the amateurs who infested the conspiracy these days. Fox Mulder, on his worst days, could do better than some of these puppies, he thought with irritated pride in his wayward protege.

"It has begun," Jason announced in a matter-of-fact tone.

The smoker sighed heavily, prompting a feral grin from Jason. "What's the matter, old friend, gotten too used to the quiet life?"

A cloud of smoke billowed in Jason's direction and he paused in his typing long enough to wave it away from the screen. The smoker, content with his unspoken comment on Jason's sense of humor, walked over to a chair by the computer and sat down. The music was too loud to carry on a conversation more than three feet apart.

"Unlike you, Jason, I do not find chaos to be exhilarating," he commented with acid humor. Pawn responds to pawn's move, he thought with a silent chuckle. He and Jason were like two old masters, trading humor and information like opening moves in an intricate chess game. There was never a winner, simply an interest in who would reach the point of checkmate first.

"Pity, it really is the only time to be alive," Jason replied as he punched the return key and sent a dozen messages flying out to his scattered agents.

"How many do you think will choose this opportunity to try to negotiate their way up the ladder?" the smoker asked with mild curiosity. Such times always brought out the ambition in lesser men. Betrayals and insurrections among the lower ranks were expected, even planned for in his strategies. The smoker pitied those fools who believed they could betray Jason and survive. There would be many openings in the ranks of middle management by the time this storm passed.

"It's one way of winnowing out the fools with more ambition than brains, old friend. Saves us the trouble later," Jason commented dryly. 

"What are those idiots thinking?" The smoker stabbed out his cigarette in a single vicious thrust. The elder statesmen in the conspiracy must have taken leave of their senses. Why now? "This is not the time for this sort of foolishness."

"Power corrupts more than morals, old friend. This idiocy is evidence that it also corrupts intelligence," Jason retorted. "Still, it will shake up the status quo, which could work to our advantage."

"Perhaps," the smoker conceded grudgingly. "Have you taken precautions?" he asked with sudden alarm. In chaos, accidents could happen and no one would have to accept the blame.

"Of course," Jason answered with just the tiniest trace of exasperation in his voice. "I'm no novice. From the opening gambits, I would say this whole mess is nothing more than an incident provoked out of casual malice that has gotten out of hand. No one is in control at this point. Our 'friends' are too busy jockeying for power amongst themselves. It is not unreasonable to suppose that disgruntled parties might seek to take advantage of the chaos to strike."

The smoker sighed. "Good. I am not yet ready to move and would not like to have my hand forced by their intemperate actions."

"My men have their orders, as do the men watching them. Nothing is being left to chance . . . or to trust," Jason added with soft menace.

"Well then, perhaps while our friends are amusing themselves with their petty games of power, we can tend to our own game. The King is stalemated and the retreat of our most threatening pawn should be sufficient to keep the White Queen occupied. I think it is time I paid our rogue Bishop a call . . . to remind him that he answers to me. I would hate for him to get the wrong impression should this dissension among our ranks reach his ears." The smoker's face twisted into a death's-head grin as he drew a final long drag from the dying cigarette and slowly released the smoke in a perfect circle. 

"Enjoy yourself, but remember, we want a wolf, not some drooling lapdog," Jason admonished gently. The smoker's eyes grew brittle.

"Perhaps you would prefer to handle this yourself?" he asked coldly, angry that Jason could read him so well.

"No, I prefer the shadows. He knows you. There is no need for him to know me. Why confuse him? Go, let him grow used to hearing his master's voice," Jason added smoothly. 

"Later, then?" the smoker asked quietly as he departed. 

"Of course. I believe it was your turn, my friend," Jason smiled as he glanced over at the chess board in the corner of his office. Not as ornate as the one occupying his friend's office, but far more ancient; French knights with white banners flying faced off against the English forces fighting under the red flag. The smoker stared at his beleaguered white king and let his mind relax into the possible moves to remove the threatened check.

Jason watched his friend leave. He was glad to be able to give his friend the gift of shortening Mr. Skinner's leash. The humiliation of having to acquiesce to Skinner's bluff over the DAT still burned in his friend's soul. There would be time enough for him to make his own call on the Assistant Director. Perhaps when the lessons of obedience and damnation were more firmly imbedded in his soul.

It was time, past time, to move Mr. Skinner into the forefront of the battle, he thought with savage contentment. Skinner's soul would make a magnificent addition to his collection. Skinner's rage at the fate closing in on him should be quite useful. A soul as strong as this one should be savored over time, like an excellent brandy. Jason felt a warm glow of contented anticipation as he returned to his shadowy machinations.

**************

It was past 7 p.m. On a hunch the smoker returned to the FBI Building. A single light, blazing out from an upstairs office rewarded his gambit. He moved swiftly through the silent halls, marveling once again at the ease with which a dedicated team could penetrate and eliminate potential threats within these hallowed halls of justice. His tools would do well to remember his power and maintain their usefulness to him. Perhaps this rising storm would afford him an opportunity to make an example of someone. A pity Mr. Skinner had proved to be a necessary piece, he thought as he unceremoniously entered the Assistant Director's office without bothering to knock.

"Working late, Mr. Skinner?" the smoker asked in a voice reminiscent of the walrus suggesting a stroll down the beach to an unwitting oyster.

Assistant Director Walter Skinner closed his eyes momentarily against the sight of his nemesis. 

"What do you want?" clipped words breaking out of a jaw clenched tight against the bitter anger that burned in his eyes.

"Is that any way to greet someone who is prepared to give you what you want the most?" A puff of smoke billowing out of lips spread thin in a sardonic smile. "I expected more enthusiasm, Mr. Skinner."

"Agent Scully is still dying. I've kept my side of the bargain, you bastard. I have yet to see you keep yours." Skinner spoke with low intensity. 

"You are an impatient man, Mr. Skinner. Like Agent Mulder, you want everything at once," the smoker rebuked softly. "I believe you will find the latest medical reports on Agent Scully's condition to be . . . quite encouraging." The smoker walked over to Skinner's desk and slowly, deliberately crushed the smoldering cigarette into the stand holding the small American flag on the edge of the desk.

Apparently satisfied that the Assistant Director understood his place in the game, the smoker drew out another cigarette and lit it, taking a long deep breath of fiery smoke. The smoker noticed that Skinner was bracing himself to endure a face full of smoke. The game-piece recognizes the hand of the master, he thought with cool satisfaction. He caught Skinner's glaring eyes for a moment, before turning aside and blowing the smoke across the room.

"You will see, I am quite prepared to deliver on my promises. You need more faith, Mr. Skinner. That is what miracles are made of, isn't it?" The smoking man smiled benevolently. As he turned to leave, he paused in the act of opening the door to turn back towards Skinner. 

"I believe this time, it is your turn to pucker up, Mr. Skinner," he commented in a dry voice that betrayed no sense of victory, only the inevitability of his dominance. Without waiting for a response, he left the office. "King's bishop is now in play," he whispered to his shadow as it trailed along the wall behind him.

**************

Skinner glared at the closing door. The lingering smell of cigarette smoke made his eyes burn and turned his soul to lead. It had taken all of his self-control not to rise up and physically assault the conductor of his personal train to damnation. Only the knowledge that retribution would not fall on his head alone stayed his hand. 

If the smoking man was telling the truth, then the last hope he had of salvaging his soul was gone. A contract with hell was binding only when the devil held up his end. If Agent Scully's cancer was in remission, then he owed hell the rest of his soul, payment to be made in installments, no doubt, he thought savagely. A piece here, a piece there, until nothing was left but the shadow of a soul where honor and duty had once reigned.

Skinner stared sightlessly at his own reflection in the portraits on the wall. There should be some change, some mark to brand him as one of the devil's minions, he thought bitterly. Thirty years ago he had seen the devil walk out of the jungle clothed in the body of a ten-year-old boy. Only a fool trusted in appearances. Now he belonged to the devil. He heard the words inside his head, mocking him.

The reports on his desk dwindled into unimportant mementos of a time when he could delude himself that he was captain of his fate. Suddenly the stark revealing light pouring down from the overhead panels was unbearable. Slowly, like a man bidding a reluctant farewell to a lover, Skinner got up and turned off the lights. Only the defused light from his desk lamp remained to illuminate his darkness. The shadows blurred his reflection that had stared back at him so harshly a moment ago.

Maybe the real Walter Skinner is trapped in that lost reflection and I'm only the ghost left behind to haunt his body, Skinner thought with bitter resignation. "I've been a ghost for nearly thirty years," he muttered. The darkness matched his mood. He felt the jungle closing in and knew that for him, the war would not end; there would be no reprieve and only hell waited for him at the end of his journey.

Staring out at the lights of the city, he wondered when he would cease feeling the agony of each step into hell and whether the end of the pain would also mark the death of his soul. A Marine to the last, he accepted this defeat in the sure and certain knowledge that he had stepped into harm's way to protect a comrade. His sacrifice had guaranteed that Mulder would be free to carry on the war. Better his soul writhing in the smoking man's grasp than Mulder's. Scully was Mulder's bright angel. Without her, Mulder would be lost to the rage he kept caged; lost to the greater battle that lay ahead. Silent allies, he and Mulder had conspired to protect her, to buy her life at any cost. Now he had to live with the consequences of his bargain. 

As he stood in the darkness, Skinner vowed that before he corrupted justice again, he would first see proof that the smoker had met his terms. Perhaps the smoker was content to give Skinner time to accept that he had no room to maneuver. The idea that the devil was a master tactician was no comfort. "I have sacrificed my honor, but I still stubbornly cling to its shadow," he muttered against the window. If the devil held up his end of the deal, then Skinner knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he would hold to his word.

A battle lost does not mean the war is lost. Mulder would know the cost of Scully's reprieve. For the first time he was glad that Mulder knew of his deal. Mulder would be wary now of trusting him too far. That hurt more than Skinner would have thought possible. He had come to value Mulder's trust as well as his passion for the truth. But better to lose the trust than keep it and chance that a betrayal would be the ultimate price for Scully's life.

Skinner stared out into the darkness and tried to pray. "God, don't make me betray him as well. If you're there and you listen to the prayers of damned souls like me, don't make me face the choice between saving Scully and betraying Mulder."

Only silence and the soft humming of a janitor cleaning the hall answered him. "A Marine doesn't pray, boy - he acts." The words of a sergeant whipping him into a firefight with scornful words and a solid kick to his ass came back to him. He had been muttering half-forgotten snatches of prayers as the world exploded around him in his first taste of war. "Good advice, Nichols," Skinner muttered back to the ghost of a man dead nearly thirty years. "But who in hell is the enemy now?"

"If you wait long enough, boy, the enemy will come to you. Fight on your terms, not on his. A Marine is brave; he ain't stupid." Nichols's voice faded away along with the memory of that gut-wrenching fight. "Yes sir!" Skinner responded and stiffened to attention, sending a silent salute out into the darkness. My terms indeed and in my own time, Skinner promised his old mentor as he prepared to dig in and make the bastard pay for every piece of his soul.

**************

Dana Scully stared out across the garishly lit city from the large bay window in the upper floor of the hospital. The darkness no longer threatened her with vague hints of the final night encroaching on the dwindling day of her life. She could look out into the night now and see its beauty. By some grace, of science or of God's, life was awakening from its nap and reclaiming her.

No angel descended to announce the miracle, merely a plain ordinary X-ray that clearly showed a marked reduction in the cancerous mass lodged in her nasal cavity. Her doctor did not indulge in more intensive tests. His attitude puzzled her, but she was relieved he had not insisted on admitting her to the hospital for further tests. She wanted to let Mulder know the good news. There would be time enough for tests and questions and probes into the elusive mysteries of medical miracles. Her rebirth into hope needed to be shared with the one person who had sustained her hope with his fierce faith in miracles.

She had arrived, face gleaming with life, to find that Mulder was enduring another session with his surgeon. The nurse hastened to assure her that this was just a routine checkup to insure that his recovery was back on schedule. Scully relaxed. For the past week, Mulder had shown signs of steady improvement. The damage from his unexplained seizure had been minimal, but had been enough to delay his weaning from the respirator. Mulder's eyes had expressed his disgust at the delay, but he seemed to accept that cooperating would get him off the machines faster.

Scully returned to an overstuffed chair in the waiting room and tried to be patient. She wanted to tell Mulder that she would be there at his side as he fought his way back to health. She wanted to give him back some of the hope he had selflessly given her over the past few months. Waiting, mulling over the whys and wherefores of her remission, was not what she had in mind.

Impatient to share her miracle, she was soon up and pacing the small waiting area weaving in and out among the other people holding vigil here as if participating in some intricate dance. She felt distanced from them - they were enduring anxiety, grief or else clinging to a tremulous hope. They reminded her that Mulder had been in their place not so long ago, waiting in fearful rage for the verdict he was powerless to avert. Her vigil was one of joy, to communicate life rather than to wait fearfully for an outcome she was helpless to affect.

"Come on, Mulder. How long does it take to check your stitches? If you're playing on the sympathies of some cute young intern. . ." Scully smiled as she envisioned her partner exerting his considerable charms on some poor unsuspecting intern to spring him loose from the respirator. 

An overwhelming wave of terror enveloping a helpless frantic plea struck her like a cannonball, sending her staggering against the wall. With an effort of will she stayed on her feet, on knees that were suddenly as sturdy as soggy pieces of bread. She was drowning in fear; she was the fear. It soured her mouth and set her lungs to fighting furiously for every breath as she choked on the cloying fog.

As suddenly as it hit, the terror receded, leaving behind an oily trace to mark the high water mark on her psyche. The silence left behind was, in its own way, as terrifying as the reeking cloud of fear. In its wake, she felt her soul crack with the knowledge that Mulder was being torn from her.

Brushing aside helpful concerned hands, she fled this place of silent waiting and hurled herself through the doors, past the watchful nurses. She glanced in the window of Mulder's empty room as she ran towards the examining rooms. 

"Ma'am, you can't go in there. Ma'am . . ." The nurse's voice, stern, tight with a touch of irritated impatience, tried to halt her headlong flight.

Scully burst through the doors prepared to do battle and found an empty room. Stunned, she rocked to a halt and tried to silence the frantic fear that was sweeping her soul away. Her mind inventoried the room with scientific calm while her heart and soul howled at the delay. No sign of a struggle, yet something was missing - besides her partner, her heart commented in sarcastic irritation. Once again her eyes swept the room, hunting for the elusive clue that would explain where her partner had been taken. 

She felt the cord binding them together stretch to the breaking point, strangling her soul as it thinned out to a single thread of spider-silk glistening in the darkness between them.

"Hang on, Mulder," she pleaded with his receding presence. She knew he was not leaving of his own accord, but he was leaving none-the-less. "Ditch me, again, mister, and I'll follow you to the gates of heaven and kick your ass," she added with ferocious certainty. For just a second, she felt a flicker of a smile along their bond before it vanished in the breathless fear that was drowning him.

She spun around to confront the harried nurse who had finally caught up with her.

"Where is he?" she demanded harshly as she pushed the nurse through the door into the empty room. There was a time and place for etiquette and this was definitely neither the time nor place. The nurse's expression went from affronted authority to stark bewilderment.

"The orderly came to take him back to his room. I can't imagine where he has gone." Confusion was being replaced by dismay. "I'll page Dr. Faber. Maybe he decided to take Mr. Mulder up to surgery," the nurse retreated from this blue-eyed fury who seemed prepared to tear an answer out of the bare walls. She and Mr. Mulder were both mad, she decided as she retreated back into the comforting realm of regulations and procedures. 

Alone again, Scully tried to quell the rising panic in her heart and concentrate on applying her investigative skills to solving this mystery. If not here, then where would someone wanting to kill Mulder take him? A quiet place where he wouldn't be disturbed, yet someplace where Mulder's death wouldn't seem out of the ordinary, she concluded. Her soul raged at her calm assessment of the cataclysm taking place, but she knew Mulder's best chance lay in her using her mind, not her heart to find him.

The nurse's words came back to her with a terrible new meaning. Surgery - what better place to kill a patient in relative safety. An unfortunate accident or better yet, the favorite word of surgeons trying to explain how they allowed a patient to die - complications. With something akin to a snarl, Scully ran for the stairs. Waiting patiently for an elevator to arrive then make its slow ascent was beyond her powers of restraint at this point. Mulder was fading, despite a desperate grip on the cliff's edge; his fingers were being pried open and the abyss waited for him with an avid hunger.

"I'm coming, Mulder," she growled as she charged up the stairs.

**************

Mulder was tired. His body ached with the effort to breathe through his shattered throat. The tube that had been his lifeline was now choking him, blocking the air he managed to draw down the inferno in his throat. Back arched with the effort to free himself from the restraints, he felt one wrist snap under the pressure, but barely registered the stab of pain as he continued to strain the broken bones against the padded straps.

He was weakening. His struggles were slacking off despite his mind's frenzied effort to cling to life. His body was just too tired, too exhausted to fight any longer. The darkness promised rest and an end to pain. His body pleaded with his mind to surrender, but the rest held no peace for him. Scully was coming. His faith narrowed down to that one indisputable tenet and refused to abandon life no matter what inducement death offered.

"Come on you son of a bitch, die already." The words of his executioner, impatient of his victim's stubborn grip on life, stung him. Mulder remembered how the man had smiled when he came to fetch him from the examining room. As steeped in sedatives as he was, Mulder felt the presence of death in the guise of this very ordinary-looking man. He was the orderly who had attended him before, but suddenly Mulder sensed that this time was different.

When his gurney headed towards the elevators, not his room, he exploded in a futile struggle against the restraining straps. The man had actually laughed at his frantic attempts to escape once the steel doors of the elevator had shut him off from all hope of rescue.

Fear had taken him then, plunging him into a black pit of despair and anger. His mind screamed Scully's name as he plummeted into the darkness. An inestimable time later, a desperate need for air drew him up from the dark sea, plunging up into the light. He felt the stitches tear apart as he tried to pull air down his battered throat only to encounter the tube blocking his airway, the tube that was supposed to feed him air. As he thrashed he saw the orderly open his fist for a second, felt the rush of air and blood into his starved lungs, then sucked vacuum as the orderly's fist closed again.

SCULLY, his mind cried as he began to slip down into the abyss. An image of Scully, surrounded by a aurora of fire, striding into the darkness after him flickered for a moment. With a last burst of strength he tried to send her all his unspoken love, all their hopes and fears for the years to come. Defying the siren song of the abyss, he clung to the edge of life, but felt the gradual slackening of his body as it defied his will and began the slow journey back into the depths of the dark sea.

I tried, Scully. I really did, but I'm just so tired, he apologized as he felt the waves take him.

A sudden rush of air startled him back to consciousness. Processed air never tasted so good. He was giving serious consideration to selling his soul for another one like it when a second burst followed the first and then another as his outraged lungs tried to suck the respirator dry. Vaguely, in a distant place where other men dwelt who did not appreciate the stunning beauty of a single breath of air, he heard the drumming of feet on tile and an echo of his own strangled gasps for air. Perhaps, soon, he could be bothered to be curious about the miracle that returned the air, but right now, he was very busy breathing.

**************

Scully hit the door of the small minor surgery room running. The slam of the swinging door against the wall sounded like the crack of a rifle. In the dim light, she saw Mulder's gurney and rushed towards it. Her feet hit something soft and went out from under her and she nearly flew across the final few feet onto Mulder's chest. A startled rumble and the blessed thrum of Mulder's heart beating were the sweetest sounds she ever hoped to hear in her life. She noted the torn stitches, but was relieved to see that the bleeding was more of a steady ooze than a torrent.

Then, abruptly recalling the thing she had stumbled across, she stood up and turned around, weapon ready. The dim light made identifying the object difficult, but the rising stench of urine and feces told her that someone had died a violent death in this room. 

Moving cautiously, in case whoever killed the person on the floor was still in the room, Scully found the light switch and turned it on. A man, dressed in an orderly's uniform, lay on the floor in a pool of urine. His face was a ghastly shade of blue-black and his tongue protruded from a rictus grin. Stooping carefully beside the body, Scully noted the presence of a thin wire buried in the flesh of the man's neck. Scuff marks on the floor indicated that the man had struggled with his assailant before he died. 

She had seen this man during her visits with Mulder. A simple orderly, a bit more attentive than most, but nothing out of the ordinary. Why would he bring Mulder here? Was he the assassin, no attempted assassin, her skittish mind corrected or had he died protecting Mulder from the real assassin?

The body was still warm. That meant someone had come in, murdered this man silently and efficiently and then left, apparently unseen, as she was running up the stairs and down the hallway. If the unknown killer had taken the time to murder the orderly, then he must have had time enough to kill Mulder. The receding bluish tinge in Mulder's face suggested that he had been without air for a significant amount of time, suggesting an attempt to attribute the death to mechanical failure. The man who killed the orderly made no attempt to hide his crime, so it was reasonable, she thought, that he would have harbored no reluctance in garroting her helpless partner.

She supposed the second assassin was still somewhere in the hospital and, according to regulations, she really should attempt to apprehend him, but she was beginning to suspect the second man, for whatever reason, had prevented Mulder's death. The sight of the unfolding crimp in tube leading from the respirator to the tracheotomy in Mulder's throat did not inspire her to seek out her partner's deliverer. She would cooperate fully with the investigation, but she wasn't going to budge from Mulder's side until she was personally satisfied that he was safe from further attacks. 

"Whoever you are, thank you, and please don't let me find out who you are," she whispered to the empty room. Trust Mulder to have a deadly efficient guardian angel.

She compromised between two duties and phoned the murder in to hospital security at the same time she asked that Dr. Faber be paged, then called Skinner and informed him of the attack. Skinner's curt assurance that he would send an agent to guard Mulder vibrated with fury. Scully welcomed his anger, it matched her own. Someone would pay for this, Scully vowed, content to know that when the time came, Skinner would not stand in her way.

Turning back to her partner, she kept her gun ready in case the assassin had backup. She didn't know why Mulder was the sudden object of murderous intent. Their adversaries in the Consortium must know that he had lost the evidence. This attack made no sense, unless it was committed out of sheer spite. 

Mulder's eyes shot open, wild and dark from his journey into the fringes of the abyss and he did not seem to be entirely back with her yet. He was struggling to focus, to rejoin her, but he had journeyed far into the shadows and the return trip would take awhile. She felt his hand squeeze hers and squeezed back as hard as she could.

"Welcome back, Mulder," she smiled in relief and gratitude. "Guess I just can't trust you on your own anymore, can I?"

Mulder said nothing, but his eyes closed and his heart began to slow down and his breathing evened out. Her hand was imprisoned in his grip. She suspected she would have to pry his fingers loose if she wanted to use that hand any time soon. Scully carefully brushed his hair off of his forehead with her other hand. "Sleep now, Mulder. I'll be here."

The sound of feet rushing down the hallway told her that her moment alone with him was at an end. Between the police and the surgeons, she would be lucky to have him to herself again for hours, but of one thing she was certain, she wasn't going to let him out of her sight until Skinner sent somebody she knew and trusted to watch over him for her.

**************

"You did well. Such loyalty will be rewarded," Jason promised as he escorted his agent to the door. As they reached the door, his voice turned cold and the friendly hand resting on the man's shoulder closed like a vise. Seeing the agent pale and buckle under the pressure, Jason smiled and released him. 

"Still, it would have been better if you had interfered before the attempt on Mr. Mulder's life. Had Mr. Mulder been a little less tenacious, I would be promising a reward of an entirely different sort," Jason said smoothly. The man swallowed nervously and nodded, grateful to be allowed the luxury of leaving this room under his own power.

Jason closed the door behind the man and smiled a cold deadly smile. The agent he had assigned to protect Mulder had betrayed him. Well, the man was dead and beyond his reach, for now. This time the fools who ran the Consortium had gone too far. This little game they were playing was getting out of hand. Time to remind them of the unpleasant side-effects of chaos.

He wondered again at Mulder's tenacity. A lesser man would have died in the street from the wound Jason inflicted, much less this latest attack. 

Who are you, Fox Mulder? Did Jonathan ever penetrate that mystery? Was that why he died? Jason wondered as he stared down at his chess board. Soon his friend would arrive and they would resume their many-layered game. The events of the evening would be analyzed and absorbed into the overall strategy of the Game. Still, Jason pondered the mystery that surrounded Mulder and catapulted him into the center of the Game he and his friend had played now for over forty years.

"Who are you?" he whispered to the silent chessmen arrayed in their endless battle lines.

 

THE END


End file.
